The King's Skjald
by SecretEngima
Summary: Thors dies beneath the blue sky with his son's wails in his ears and arrows in a dozen places. Thors dies with the regret that he must leave his child behind. Gladiolus is born with memories of war-love-seas-regrets that aren't his. But that's okay. There is a child here too, with eyes like the sky and an ocean for a soul and he won't leave this child behind to cry. Not this time.


**Behold! A random crossover one-shot has appeared! Blame my FFXV obsessed brain and the buddy who introduced me to the Vinland Saga anime that came out. My brain took one look at Thors and dubbed his Viking Dad Gladiolus, then after episode 3, my gremlin brain insisted that CLEARLY Thors reincarnating as Gladiolus would be the funnest once-shot to write right now and... well. What is impulse control. I have none. So this exists and at least one more one-shot in this 'verse is already in progress. Everybody enjoy!**

**Copyright Disclaimer: I do not own FFXV or Vinland Saga or any references in this story. The only thing I own is my wacky plot.**

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Thors died.

He died because of … several reasons. Because of a broken oath come back to bite. Because of the host of arrows buried in his _chest-throat-back-heart_. But mostly…

Mostly because of his son. His son, who deserved to live a full life. His son who clutched his legs and wailed as the life faded from Thors and darkness came to claim him. His son that would **live** because there was honor in that pirate captain's eyes —worn, tattered thing, rarely given and even more rarely acknowledged— and Askeladd would keep his word and leave Thors son and his friend and the young men of his village free and unharmed.

So Thors died on his feet, with a dozen arrows scraping his vitals and his son's sobbing in his ears —sobbing that hurt to hear more than the arrows, but at least it meant his son was **alive**— and his face turned toward the _blue-blue-blue_ sky.

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Six month old Gladiolus Amicitia woke up from where he'd been sleeping in his crib, took one look at the ceiling painted a deep shade of _blue-blue-blue_ and burst into tears from sparks of _memory-thought-pain-memory_ that were too complicated to hold in his head or understand beyond the intense need to wail his heart out until the impressions **stopped**. His mother burst into the room a moment later, picked him up and cooed, but he didn't stop for a long time. Not until the echoing impressions of _things-inside-get-them-out_ and _pain-pain-grief-pain_ faded away into the back of his young mind. His mother eventually settled him down in his crib again, glad that whatever had triggered the tears was gone and forgotten.

But it wasn't. Not really. It came back as he grew older, cemented into faded-out pictures and soul-deep impressions as his mind became better able to cling to those too-real dreams. Gladiolus learned to move on from it those mornings, play and crawl and listen to his parents coo over him. Gladiolus moved on…

But somewhere in the shadows of his mind, where old soul met young body and memories weren't tethered to a too-young brain, Thors stayed.

He never really left.

Thors lurked in the background of Gladiolus's thoughts as he got older, cementing words in his head that his parents didn't speak and squiggles that weren't in the pretty picture books they read to him. It made it hard to talk. Because Gladiolus **knew** what he wanted to say, but there were two ways to say it and only one of them was the one that made his Mama and Papa kiss him and cuddle him and praise him for being so smart. That way wasn't the way that was first in his head, so he often spent too much time trying to sort between the different sets of words to actually **say** any of them. It was frustrating, but Gladiolus didn't really cry over it —Thors didn't cry, even under the _blue-blue-blue_ sky and Gladiolus wasn't Thors, but sometimes he felt like it and so he didn't really cry either if he could help it—.

But Thors wasn't all frustration and nightmares. He also gave Gladiolus memories that were useful. There were moments when Gladiolus looked at the world around him and **knew** what things were or what was going on when he otherwise wouldn't have. He knew how to run, and jump, and even if he wasn't tall and big like Thors, he could use those memories to tell him what he was doing right or wrong and why he kept falling over. There were lots of times he knew things because of Thors. Like the time he toddled in on his Papa carefully polishing his huge swords and the calm, swirly shadows in his mind that were Thors-not-Gladiolus told him: that's a sword. You hold **that** end with one hand or two and you swing **that** end at the people trying to swing their swords at you.

You use both hands to pull the blade free and then take care to wipe away the red when you're done.

It wouldn't occur to Gladiolus until much, much later that the knowledge of swords and how they were used was not something any normal child should know, let alone on sight at age three —let alone in distant but vivid snapshots of _war-battle-red-red-red_ that only scared him at night when he dreamed and could **feel** it rather than just picture it—.

It wouldn't occur to him until much, much later that there was a reason Papa turned white-pale when Gladiolus quietly, choppily asked why his sword wasn't red and who he had stopped with it —who he had killed, but Gladiolus didn't know that word in his parents' language yet, only in Thors'—.

Papa didn't answer him then, but Gladiolus didn't mind. He didn't really care either way, because Gladiolus was too young to understand the real implications of dripping red and swords and men who swung them at you and Thors was too tired of those things to want to think about them.

Thors was tired a lot of the time, and it made Gladiolus tired too —because he was Thors, but he also wasn't, and Thors wasn't a separate person so much as a collection of life experiences all painted in the back of Gladiolus's head, telling him things about a world too big for him to understand yet—. Gladiolus didn't like being tired, but Thors' kind of tired didn't make him sleepy so much as quiet and careful not to make a mess, and his parents liked it when he didn't make a mess, so Gladiolus let himself be Thors' kind of quiet a lot of the time. It was easier than trying to fight it off anyway. If he fought it off while he was awake, it just came back in vivid dreams he only remembered bits and pieces of when he woke up, usually in tears.

Papa tried to talk to him about his nightmares as he grew older and it became easier to separate Thors' words from the words of the rest of the world, but Gladiolus could never quite get them right and what he did say only made Papa hold him tighter and his breathing stutter —_worry,_ muttered his Thors pieces once, _worry over his son, like any good father does_—. Gladiolus did his best not to tell Papa about his nightmares after that. He didn't want his Papa or his Mama to worry, but sometimes the dreams got too much and he had to sob it out into his Papa's shoulders so that it would fade properly back into the little corners Thors lived in rather than stick to the parts of his mind that were all Gladiolus's and make him hurt inside —_from the dozen arrows buried in his body or the endless ships in stormy waters filled with yelling-screaming-dying men or the few fragile dreams of a gentle woman with gold hair and blue eyes that made Gladiolus _**_ache_**_ somewhere deeper than just his skin and bones_—.

Gladiolus got older, and the pieces that were Thors slid deeper into place, blurred and melted until he stopped being able to really tell where Gladiolus's knowledge from the world around him ended and Thors' knowledge of _life-war-love-weapons-snow-oceans_ began. Thors' memories were never completely clear, and Gladiolus could tell they had large holes in them, but he didn't really care about that. He wasn't Thors —not anymore, for all he learned from Thors and thought about things similarly—, and he had his own life to live. He had his father and mother to love and a duty to train for —_oaths to take someday_, Thors whispered, _oaths that will not be broken this time_—.

Gladiolus learned how to use the sword, and the axe, and how to fight someone with his bare hands, and in the moments where he touched weighted steel or breathed hard from a good fight, he felt … whole. Like he stood on equal footing as the tall, sad-eyed reflection he sometimes felt he should see in the mirror and could throw back his shoulders just as proudly, speak just as calmly, and protect just as fiercely —because that was his only reason for fighting, always, for all that steel made him feel alive, he never, ever wanted to use it to end life in senseless war, not again—.

His trainers gushed over his skill, how fast he learned stances and concepts, how dedicated and quiet and calm he was in the heat of the moment. They hailed him as a prodigy to his father and his mother and his King-Uncle —Regis, the Oathkeeper, king and family, who's soul rippled with magic as deep as the stones—. Perhaps even on the same level as his godfather, the famed Cor the Immortal. Gladiolus never had the heart or mind to tell them that he wasn't prodigious. He just already knew all the things they were trying to teach him. He knew the weight of the blade and the rush of fists and feet through the air. Just like he knew how to row a boat and navigate the seas and shear sheep and a hundred thousand other little things he had never done or seen. Like how he knew the taste of the salty sea on his lips and sometimes woke with the smell of the ocean air in his nostrils even though he'd never been beyond the towering walls of Insomnia.

He never said anything though. Because Gladiolus wasn't Thors, and if people knew Thors had once existed, they might want to make him exist again and Thors … Thors was gone. Painted over and into Gladiolus Amicitia so that the Troll of Jom could rest in peace and the future Shield of the King had the right knowledge to walk tall and guard well. And if he took to wearing his hair long enough to capture in a low ponytail, if he measured his words before he spoke and watched the world with eyes that both knew too much and never enough … well. Nobody questioned it, and Gladiolus never answered.

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When his son was three years old, Clarus Amicitia came to the startling, terrifying realization that Gladiolus was not normal. Now, his son had always been an odd child. Quiet and oddly alert when awake, prone to screaming nightmares nothing could calm when asleep. As he grew older, Gladiolus had been slow to speak, his toddler days absent of the baby babble all the books claimed would come naturally. Instead, he was quick to crawl and walk, quiet and methodical in a way Clarus couldn't find reference to in any of the parenting books Regis had happily purchased for him upon learning of Juno's pregnancy. Gladiolus listened intently when people spoke, amber gaze latching onto lips and his tiny mouth silently mimicking their shapes until one day he had just … started talking. Single words. Careful, lisping bits and pieces. Papa, Mama, hungry, happy. Sentences took much longer, Gladiolus was too methodical to risk slurring his words together unless he truly had something to ask or say. By the time his baby boy was three years old, Clarus could count on one hand the number of times Gladiolus had spoken a sentence longer than four words.

Then one day Gladiolus somehow managed to escape Juno's watch and trundle into Clarus's study when he was doing weapon's maintenance, carefully polishing and sharpening each sword in his collection to perfection in what he had thought was a moment of privacy and safety from his vulnerable child. Clarus had set his sword aside and scooped up Gladiolus the moment he spotted the child standing there, watching him work with wide, solemn amber eyes.

He had held his son and settled him in his lap, because rushing his child away from the swords would just make them an object of fascination and he hadn't wanted to risk what would happen if a child as stubborn as his son decided he **had** to touch something without permission. Besides, Gladiolus was incredibly smart, Clarus hadn't seen any harm in trying to impress upon him the importance of weapon safety now, so long as he made sure to keep his son from getting too close to his collection of gleaming blades, "Careful now, my little flower boy," Clarus had murmured, "those are dangerous. Do you understand? Those are very dangerous. You mustn't touch them until I say you can."

Gladiolus hadn't tried to touch, just blinked once, then twice, then frowned cutely in confusion, "Where?"

Clarus had rubbed a hand through his son's hair patiently, "Where what, Gladio?"

Gladiolus pointed at the blades and the cloth Clarus had been using to polish them, "No red. Where red?"

Clarus had felt his fingers still in his son's hair, "…Red? I don't … understand, Gladio. What red?"

His son had kicked his legs back and forth, calm as could be, "The red. From the … people. Stopped people. That you stopped."

Clarus had stopped breathing and his son apparently took it as a sign of confusion because he'd wrinkled his nose in concentration and made a sloppy gesture with his clenched fist, like he was swinging an imaginary sword, "You use swords to … stop people. Then the sword … is red. You're cleaning it," Gladiolus had pointed at the sword like what he'd observed was the most normal thing in the world to notice, "but no red."

Clarus had held his son tighter and found himself unable to answer. Because how did someone explain to a toddler that you cleaned swords more often than just to get blood off them? How should a father react to the sudden realization that his three year old son, who had never seen violence or battle in his life, knew that swords were for **killing people**? Because that's what "stopping" someone with a sword meant. That's what made a sword "red".

His son shouldn't have known that. He wasn't even old enough to have the right words to explain the concept but the concept was clearly **there**. In Gladiolus's **head**.

He'd taken his son back out of the study, put him down for a nap, told his wife to watch their son for an hour or so because something urgent had come up and Clarus had to leave. Then he'd rushed straight to the Citadel to have a panic attack in Regis's study because **his three year old son knew about killing people with swords**. Regis had abandoned his paperwork and talked him down while Cor just quietly refilled Clarus's shot glass whenever Clarus looked particularly haggard. Clarus must have misunderstood, Regis told him. Or he was blowing things out of proportion. Maybe Gladiolus had seen something on the television when Clarus and Juno were out and a babysitter was watching him instead. A cartoon or something simple enough for Gladiolus to remember but not graphic and scary enough for him to cry over.

Clarus went home clinging to that belief.

It didn't last very long.

Because Gladiolus had always had nightmares. Off and on, horrid things that drove his son to blood-curdling screams or —perhaps worse— whisper quiet sobs that shook his entire body but made barely any sound. But as he grew older, Clarus was able to ask about those nightmares in an effort to comfort his son by assuring him they weren't real.

Gladiolus dreamed of war.

His son never called it that. But in choppy, hiccuping words shared in the late night, that was what Gladiolus described. Red. Swords. The screaming of men as they fell or made others fall and not get up. Storms over waves of dark water that had no end and Gladiolus's own hands holding a weapon dyed _red-red-red_ as he made man after man fall into the waves or down onto the wooden boards of the rocking ships —_"I'm so'ry" his son had sobbed into his shoulder, "Didn't wanna, couldn't _**_stop_**_, so tired bu' I couldn' _**_stop_**_"_—. Things that made Clarus hold his son tight and his breathing hitch while his wife —his beautiful, fearless wife who had first introduced herself after felling an assassin with just her stiletto heels— stood in the doorway and covered her mouth to smother her tears.

Those were all things Gladiolus shouldn't have been able to conceive, let alone describe and dream. Things that were somehow not the **worst** of his nightmares.

"He promised to sail away," Gladiolus had whispered once, halfway between tearful wakefulness and exhausted sleep, "if I stood still. He'd sail away an' leave them alone. He promised. An' he meant it. So I stood still. An' the arrows came." Sleepy hands had traced places on his chest, shoulder, stomach, neck —so many places **too many places**—, "The sky was very blue." Gladiolus's amber gaze had sluggishly spotted the tears sliding free of Clarus's face and he'd patted them with a tired hand and whispered over and over until he fell back to sleep, "S'okay. No cry. No more cryin'. Only hurt a little while. Please don' cry. Please don' cry. T'orfinn cried. Couldn't comfort him, please don' cry too…"

Clarus had spent a very long night sitting up in the kitchen with his wife, clutching the neck of a bottle filled with something far weaker than he wanted while his wife methodically arranged her fighting knives on the table with shaking hands.

Regis stopped trying to convince him that he was overthinking things after that. Had watched Gladiolus's first official training session from a hidden observation room with wide, sad eyes as Clarus's seven year old son stood easy in his skin and moved with a sloppiness that wasn't inexperience so much as a loss of anticipated reach. How each new wooden practice weapon laid on the table was assessed and **recognized** with the same effortless ease of any soldier.

Those Who Walk Twice, Regis had whispered finally. A phrase so old and forgotten it had no shorter, simpler version in modern languages. A soul so strong that it could not help but return to walk Eos again. Could not help but **remember** the first time it had walked, no matter how long ago it had been. But those were myths. Old wives' tales to be admired for their antiquity and scoffed at for their inaccuracy and yet somehow … that was his son. That was Gladiolus. His baby boy with too old eyes and too calm a manner, who knew things that no child knew because he hadn't always been a child.

"Who do you think he was?" Cor asked into the stunned quiet as they watched Gladiolus steadily work his way through the first kata, movements already smoother than they should be for a seven year old that had never held a weapon before in his —in this— life.

_A warrior,_ Clarus almost answered. _A sailor, a _**_commander_**_._ Clarus rubbed his mouth with a hand and breathed past the memories of his son sleep-talking in a lost language or comparing words to himself when he thought his parents weren't there to hear, one word in the King's Speech and the other in something rough and wild and ancient.

The memories of his son whispering names in the quietest of his nightmares, the ones that left him shaking with silent tears rather than loud screams. Helga, Yiva, Thorfinn.

_"__T'orfinn cried. Couldn't comfort him, please don' cry too…"_

Clarus caught his answer between his teeth and swallowed it back, because it struck far too close to home and he didn't want to think about that sadness, the grief that had been felt more over tears gone without comfort than countless arrows piercing _back-lungs-chest-neck_. The only reason a killer of men would stand still and **let** the arrows come.

_A father._

"It doesn't matter now," Clarus choked out roughly, "he is Gladiolus Amicitia. He is my son. He is **Juno's** son. He is Noctis's future Shield-." Clarus paused, glanced worriedly at Regis. Because his son may have walked twice, might remember too much to be a normal child, but surely Regis wouldn't consider that a reason to deny Clarus's eldest his birthright and duty? Surely Regis wouldn't see Gladiolus as a danger?

Regis smiled reassuringly, "Of course he will be. I think he'll get along very well with Noctis, actually. He might be just the influence Noctis needs. Very calm and mature, a bit like Ignis." Clarus's shoulders loosened and Cor hummed as they watched Gladiolus take a break only when his instructor told him to, otherwise content to endlessly repeat the beginning lesson until he had it down perfectly. Clarus was caught between pride over Gladiolus's dedication and fear of it. Because his son was not like other children as it was, what if he threw himself so deeply into the training that was familiar from a previous lifetime that he forgot how to be a child altogether?

Before his thoughts could fully spiral, Regis laid a hand on his shoulder, blue eyes tired and sympathetic, "I know it is not traditional for the royal heir to meet his future Shield until the Shield reaches the age of ten, but I think it would be wise to make an exception, don't you? Noctis and Ignis could use another friend their age, I believe."

Clarus gave a watery laugh of gratitude, "As you wish, Old Friend." Clarus didn't say that it would be a relief for his son to have any friends around his age at all, as up until that point all attempts at playdates had fallen flat and Gladiolus's only companions had been his parents and the various Crownsguard that were all too delighted to babysit when both Juno and Clarus were too busy. Regis already knew about all that.

Now if their introduction just went better than Clarus's and Regis's had, Clarus might remember how to breathe properly again.

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One early morning, a mere week into his formal training —a week of his trainers rapidly realizing his "prodigy" status and trying to see what his upper limits were while gushing to his tight-lipped father—, his father told Gladiolus to dress nicely and come along. There was someone Gladiolus needed to meet.

He took Gladiolus —who had only just managed to grow out his hair enough to make a stubby ponytail and was dressed in his nicest shirt and pants— to the Citadel. But instead of taking him down to the training rooms or up to the study where Uncle-King Regis and his godfather Cor could usually be found, his father took him to the throne room.

Gladiolus knew, the moment he saw the towering doors of the throne room, that whatever awaited him inside was serious. He wondered, briefly, if he was to take his oaths now, but then dismissed that because he was only seven, he had only been in training for a week. Surely it was too soon for that. His father pushed the doors open and led the way inside and the parts of Gladiolus that remembered smoky lodges and simple wooden huts shivered in awe at the towering scrollwork of stone, the endless ebony steps that glowed in the sunlight pouring in from windows as tall as trees. Regis stood there, his smile warm but his back straight and his magic echoing with the solemnity of a king. But Gladiolus almost didn't notice him because-.

Because the ocean was here.

He could feel it, under his skin the same way he could feel Regis's steady as old stone aura. A tiny face peaked out from behind Regis and Gladiolus blinked, because … there was a little boy. A little boy peaking out from behind Regis's back who felt like the ocean given human form. A deep wellspring of magic and life, placid and gentle on the surface but hiding the potential for ship-shattering fury if provoked. Gladiolus stared despite himself until Regis tucked the boy back out of sight and dragged Gladiolus's attention to him with a gentle, "Gladiolus." Gladiolus looked reluctantly up into Regis's face, "I want you to meet my son, Noctis. Do you know who he is?"

_The ocean,_ Gladiolus didn't say. Instead, he straightened his shoulders and folded his arms behind him like his memories of Thors, "He is the Crown Prince. Heir of the kingdom. I am his Shield. I am to protect him. With my life and … in my death."

Regis's magic flickered with an emotion Gladiolus couldn't identify for a moment, and his father's hand tightened on his shoulder, but then Regis smiled again, "That is very true, Gladiolus. However, a king cannot **only** be protected. A king must also learn to protect, and to lead. To keep walking forward, accepting the consequences of his choices and never looking back. But that is not a lesson he can learn alone, he needs someone who will follow him and, should he choose to stand still, stand at his side as more than a Shield. But as a friend … and a brother." Regis leaned down just a bit to be closer to Gladiolus's eye level, lowered his voice to an almost conspiratorial whisper, "Do you think you can do that for me, Gladiolus?"

Gladiolus felt like the world was pausing to hear his answer —holding still like the moment before arrows loosed from their strings beneath a _blue-blue-blue_ sky— and had to swallow just a little before he nodded, "Of course, Your Majesty." It was something he'd heard his father say to Regis before —**King** Regis, this was his ruler, not just the man who had made silly faces at him and helped him learn tricky words when he was smaller— and it felt like something he should say now.

Regis's smile widened just a bit, but the man still glanced over Gladiolus's head at his father before straightening up and standing aside. He nudged his five year old son and heir forward with a gentle hand and murmured into the wide-eyed silence between the two boys, "Gladiolus, this is my son, Noctis. Noctis, meet Gladiolus."

Huge blue eyes —_blue-blue-blue as the sky in the gaps between stone cliffs after arrows had flown, blue as the ocean beneath a clear summer sun_— blinked shyly at him as the boy held out a hand in greeting, a tiny, hopeful smile on a face still round and soft with baby fat and … and…

Oh.

Gladiolus felt the parts of him that were Thors sit up sharply like they hadn't since he first dreamed of his Helga holding a tiny bundle of a child and demanding with fire in her eyes to _"give her a name, Thors"_. Since the first time he had dreamed of another tiny child in his too-large hands and his own voice rumbling _"his name is Thorfinn"_. Everything inside him shifted almost painfully, jerked two feet to the left and swelled open to accept this tiny child with the sky in his eyes and the wild ocean for a soul —_Thors' ocean, the one he had sailed all his life, the one he had loved and feared in equal measure until the day he died just like any other viking_—.

As Noctis's smile faltered and his hand fell back to fidget with his shirt hem at Gladiolus's lack of response, so shy and afraid of rejection, something in Gladiolus's head that was so deep it was primal and so strong it was a thunderstorm in his heart rumbled, _"Mine. My boy. My ocean. My heart."_ The shifting of his _heart-soul-mind-world_ snapped into its new place and Gladiolus sank to his knees so that he was looking up into Noctis's startled face rather than down. Gingerly taking the prince's tiny hands in his own —_so small_, whispered the pieces that remembered being a bear of a man with hands rough from labor and war, _he's so _**_small_**—, Gladiolus smiled past the thick lump in his throat, "Hello there. It is an **honor** to meet you … _Minn Konungr_." _My _**_King_**_._

While Noctis's nose wrinkled in confusion even as his smile returned at the prospect of a new friend and Gladiolus smiled up at the boy he had greeted with a title no one else understood, Regis looked down at amber eyes that gleamed with a fervent, soul-deep **love** for a boy Gladiolus had only just met and **knew** that there would be no one more loyal to his son. No heart more dedicated. No hand more ready to defend. Because he knew that look. He knew that wonder and fragile awe. All he had to do was look up at his friend, watching the two boys interact with wet eyes, all he had to do was look in a **mirror**, and he would see it again.

There was no love quite the same as the love of a parent toward their new child.

Clarus looked over at Regis as Noctis tentatively tugged Gladiolus away to play, the older boy hanging on every word Noctis said with a patient, reverent affection. There was something fragile in Clarus's eyes, something knowing and pained even as it was grateful as he whispered, "Thank you for this, Old Friend."

Regis thought of his own childhood spent alone save for Clarus and Weskham, waiting for a father who was forever too busy to give him the same patient affection he could see in Gladiolus's eyes, then chuckled and gripped his friend's arm, "No, Clarus. Thank **you**." Then, because the world felt a little too heavy and the implications of his own thoughts a little too dark, Regis nudged Clarus's side and whispered playfully, "Though you may not be thanking me for long. I do believe you status as godfather is at risk of being stolen over there."

They watched Gladiolus calmly shake Ignis's hand from where the boy had been peaking shyly into the throne room to check on Noctis while the youngest of the boys babbled excitedly about something that made Gladiolus smile wider than Regis could ever remember seeing before and Clarus chuckled wetly, "I think I can live with that."

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**In case anybody is wondering, Skjald is, according to the wonders of Wikipedia and Google, the Old Norse word for Shield.**


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